NKU to dissolve DEI office following resignation of Chief Diversity Officer
Northern Kentucky University will dissolve its Office of Inclusive Excellence following the resignation of the university’s chief diversity officer, the president announced in an email on Thursday.
NKU is the second Kentucky university in recent weeks to dissolve its central office related to diversity, equity and inclusion — referred to as DEI. The University of Kentucky announced earlier this month that it would be dissolving its Office of Institutional Diversity after feedback, including meetings with legislators who expressed concerns about the role of DEI.
Lawmakers failed to pass the bills targeting DEI programs during this year’s General Assembly, but UK administrators said they expect lawmakers to pursue similar bills next legislative session. NKU President Cady Short-Thompson referenced similar concerns in her announcement of the change.
“The circumstances under which universities across the Commonwealth and the country find themselves, coupled with the legislative priorities of state leaders for the upcoming session, require universities to change,” Short-Thompson said Thursday.
Legislation targeting DEI efforts on college campuses has been proposed in 28 states since 2023, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which has been tracking such legislation.
At NKU, the removal of the office comes with the resignation of Darryl Peal, who had been the university’s chief diversity officer since 2020.
The university has already removed the office’s page from its website, but the Herald-Leader saved a copy of the mission statement earlier this summer. It said the office’s goal was “cultivating a community of belonging by facilitating the knowledge, awareness, and skills critical to creating and sustaining a campus educational community and workplace environment that embraces diversity, achieves equitable outcomes for individuals and communities, and models inclusiveness through respectful interactions and opportunities to fully participate in the life of the university.”
In announcing the office’s closure, Short-Thompson wrote that “our primary focus is on the success of every NKU student while remaining true to our mission and vision.”
“At our core, we are dedicated to fostering an environment that values each person and maximizes learning,” she said.
Short-Thompson said the university will “explore ways to continue the work of ensuring that NKU is a campus where everyone feels welcome and supported.”
DEI in Kentucky
In addition to eliminating the Office of Institutional Diversity, UK announced several other changes that will take effect in the coming weeks. UK will remove mandatory diversity training throughout the university, and no employees will be required to write a diversity statement to be employed.
To be “impartial facilitators as an institution of broad perspectives,” the university and President Eli Capilouto will no longer make statements on political or partisan events or issues, including on the university website, he said. A new office, the Office for Community Relations, will be created in place of the Office of Institutional Diversity.
No jobs will be eliminated at UK because of the change, and existing programs will be moved into new homes within the university.
The two bills proposed in Kentucky earlier this year would have blocked all DEI initiatives that promoted “discriminatory concepts” and would have forced public colleges and universities to dismantle DEI offices and positions. Senate Bill 6, which was aimed at restricting DEI offices at public universities, failed to pass on the last night of the 2024 legislative session.
Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, who sponsored one of the anti-DEI bills earlier this year, argued last spring that DEI initiatives represented a “failed policy” that made “college more divided, more expensive and less tolerant.”
In March, the Kentucky Attorney General said public universities’ use of certain DEI policies violated the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights Act. Drawing on the U.S. Supreme Court case which struck down affirmative action last year, Attorney General Russell Coleman said using “underrepresented minorities” as a metric for funding state colleges is unconstitutional.
Following that, a law was passed barring the Council on Postsecondary Education from considering race in its performance-based funding model, which determines how state funding is distributed to public universities and community colleges.
CPE then changed metrics in its performance-based funding model to remove “race-based metrics” from funding consideration, giving more weight to low-income bachelor’s degree produced and introducing degrees earned by first-generation students and non-traditional students into the model.